One of the most important parts of our world and one that keeps us alive are bees. They pollinate more than seventy—yes seventy—percent of the crops that feed mankind. In addition they give us more than 30 billion dollars in crops every year in our economy. That means that if we have no bees we’re going to be a hungry country. It also means that living with no bees simply isn’t possible.

Bees are declining very quickly these days. They are under threat from many different problems, not the least of which is a virus and another problem Varroa Descructor, a parasitic problem that feeds on bees and can cause ruin to an entire colony of bees in a very short time.

Artificial Intelligence and Big Data are being brought to bear on the problem and are making headway in finding ways to save the bees. The Bee Scanning app is using the vision of a computer to help to protect the bees and to show the farmers at the first sign problems so that they can go and correct it. The Machine Learning and the object recognition is making it so that the beekeeper can see the mites on the bees and work to eradicate them more fully and more quickly.

The decline of bees must be halted but in the interim, there are drones, robo-bees as it were that are now in use to collect pollen particles and to fly into the next flower and rub the pollen off. The robo-bees are being controlled manually at the moment but the team that created them has said that they are developing autonomous bees using the power of AI.

While it isn’t the ideal solution it is A solution and one that may save both the bees and mankind in the long haul.